October 26, 2007

Adobe apps on Leopard: What you need to know

Just minutes ago, Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5–"Leopard" to its friends–went on sale. Congrats to everyone at Apple on what looks like a terrific release.

So, what does this mean in terms of running Adobe software? The good news is that most Adobe apps don’t require updates in order to run well. That is, the CS3 versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and other apps are good to go for Leopard right now. Rock out.

The CS3-generation applications that require patches are After Effects, Premiere Pro, Encore, and Soundbooth (due to go live in early December), and Acrobat 8/Reader 8 (due in January). Although Adobe is working on these updates, here’s a key line from the Adobe Leopard FAQ (PDF):

Does Adobe recommend running Production Premium or Master Collection before its
updates are available?

A. Yes, we are comfortable recommending this. Our testing revealed a few issues in specific
workflows when running the video professional applications on Mac OS X Leopard. Many
video professionals would not encounter these issues on a day-to-day basis, but we want to
provide updates in December 2007 to address these issues and meet our standards of quality. You can evaluate the issues by visiting www.adobe.com/go/support and searching the online
knowledgebase for more information.

What about older versions of Adobe software? The FAQ says,

While older Adobe applications may install and run on Mac OS X Leopard, they were
designed, tested, and released to the public several years before this new operating system
became available. You may, therefore, experience a variety of installation, stability, and
reliability issues for which there is no resolution. Older versions of our creative software will
not be updated to support Mac OS X.

I can’t speak for other app teams, but while we naturally concentrated our testing on Photoshop CS3 (and beyond), we also tested CS2 a fair bit. The only significant problem we discovered is that Photoshop CS2’s Web Photo Gallery module can crash while running under Leopard. We plan to post an updated version that fixes the crash, but that won’t go up until Monday. In case you’re impatient, I’ve attached the file here.

And that, in a nutshell, is it. Have fun.

[Update: Adobe evangelist Terry White is one of the most deeply knowledgeable people inthe world when it comes to the Creative Suite applications. He’s been logging his Leopard upgrade experiences on his blog: see The Road To Leopard, parts 1, 2, and 3. On the whole, things seem to be going really well.

Per a note in Terry’s third installment, I’ve gotta say, I’m deeply disappointed that Time Machine now apparently won’t support backups across a wireless network. Good thing I rushed out and bought a new AirPort base station in February, along with a new USB hard drive (given that the base station doesn’t support the Apple-designed FireWire standard)–all in anticipation of wireless household backups. Here’s hoping the planned functionality will be enabled in an update.]

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